Justin A. Bosch, Ph.D.

Our lab studies inter-organ communication via proteins in blood circulation (e.g. hormones). We are interested in answering long-standing questions such as: Where do circulating proteins come from (i.e. cell types), where do they target, and which mediate inter-organ communication? Our goal is to broadly interlink organ systems by discovering and studying novel circulating inter-organ factors, which has the potential to find therapeutic targets and biomarkers.

We use a combination of experimental and computational tools, including protein proximity labeling (e.g. TurboID) to map the origins and destinations of blood proteins, mass spectrometry of blood plasma, in-silico protein complex prediction (e.g. AlphaFold), and genome engineering tools (e.g. CRISPR) to visualize and perturb candidate inter-organ factors. For in-vivo experiments, we use Drosophila, a model animal with human-like organ systems and precise tissue-specific genetic tools.

Current projects in the lab involve characterizing candidate inter-organ factors, including some that control body size and others that target the brain. We are also developing novel experimental and computational tools to overcome technical barriers related to discovering and studying inter-organ factors, and beyond. Finally, we are investigating human missense variants in hormones and their receptors, such as predicting those that are pathogenic.

1. Abby V McGee, Yanjing V Liu, Audrey L Griffith, Zsofia M Szegletes, Bronte Wen, Carolyn Kraus, Nathan W Miller, Ryan J Steger, Berta Escude Velasco, Justin A. Bosch, Jonathan D Zirin, Raghuvir Viswanatha, Erik J Sontheimer, Amy Goodale, Matthew A Greene, Thomas M Green, John G Doench. Modular vector assembly enables rapid assessment of emerging CRISPR technologies. bioRxiv 2023.10.25.564061; In press at Cell Genomics.

2. Jonathan Zirin, Barbara Jusiak, Raphael Lopes, Ben Ewen-Campen, Justin A. Bosch, Christians Villalta, Corey Forman, Yanhui Hu, Stephanie Mohr, Norbert Perrimon (2024). Expanding the Drosophila toolkit for dual control of gene expression. eLife 12:RP94073

3. Justin A. Bosch, Keith N, Escobedo F, Fisher WW, LaGraff JT, Rabasco J, Wan KH, Weiszmann R, Hu Y, Kondo S, Brown JB, Perrimon N, Celniker SE. Molecular and functional characterization of the Drosophila melanogaster conserved smORFome. Cell Rep. 2023 Oct 26;42(11):113311. doi: 10.1016/j.celrep.2023.113311. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 37889754.

4.  Justin A. Bosch, Berrak Ugur, Israel Pichardo-Casas, Jorden Rabasco, Felipe Escobedo, Zhongyuan Zuo, Ben Brown, Susan Celniker, David Sinclair, Hugo Bellen, and Norbert Perrimon. (2022) Two neuronal peptides encoded from a single transcript regulate mitochondrial complex III in Drosophila. Elife. 2022 Nov 8;11:e82709. PMID: 36346220

5. Droujinine IA, Meyer AS, Wang D, Udeshi ND, Hu Y, Rocco D, McMahon JA, Yang R, Guo J, Mu L, Carey DK, Svinkina T, Zeng R, Branon T, Tabatabai A, Justin A. Bosch, Asara JM, Ting AY, Carr SA, McMahon AP, Perrimon N. (2021) Proteomics of protein trafficking by in vivo tissue-specific labeling. Nature Communications. Apr 22;12(1):2382. PMID: 33888706 

6. Justin A. Bosch, Gabriel Birchak, Norbert Perrimon. (2021) Precise genome engineering in Drosophila using prime editing. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Jan 5;118(1):e2021996118. PMID: 33443210

7. Justin A. Bosch, Chiao-Lin Chen, and Norbert Perrimon. (2021) Proximity-dependent labeling methods for proteomic profiling in living cells: An update. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Developmental Biology. Jan;10(1):e392. PMID: 32909689

8. Justin A. Bosch, Shannon Knight, Oguz Kanca, Jonathan Zirin, Donghui Yang-Zhou, Yanhui Hu, Jonathan Rodiger, Gabriel Amador, Hugo J. Bellen, Norbert Perrimon, Stephanie E. Mohr. (2020) Use of the CRISPR-Cas9 system to introduce fluorescent tags into endogenous genes in Drosophila cultured cells. Current Protocols in Molecular Biology. Mar;130(1):e112. PMID: 31869524

9. Justin A. Bosch, Ryan Colbeth, Jonathan Zirin, Norbert Perrimon. (2020) Gene knock-ins in Drosophila using homology-independent insertion of universal donor plasmids. Genetics. Jan;214(1):75-89. PMID: 31685521

10. Tess C Branon, Justin A Bosch, Ariana D Sanchez, Namrata D Udeshi, Tanya Svinkina, Steven A Carr, Jessica L Feldman, Norbert Perrimon, Alice Y Ting. (2018) Directed evolution of TurboID for efficient proximity labeling in living cells and organisms. Nature Biotechnology. Oct;36(9):880-887. PMID: 30125270

11. Justin A. Bosch, Taryn M. Sumabat, and Iswar K. Hariharan. (2016) Persistence of RNAi-Mediated Knockdown in Drosophila Complicates Mosaic Analysis yet Enables Highly Sensitive Lineage Tracing. Genetics. May;203(1):109-18. PMID: 26984059

12. Justin A. Bosch, Ngoc Han Tran and Iswar K. Hariharan. (2015) CoinFLP: A system for efficient mosaic screening and for visualizing clonal boundaries in Drosophila. Development. Feb 1;142(3):597-606. PMID: 25605786

13. Justin A. Bosch, Taryn M. Sumabat, Yassi Hafezi, Brett J, Pellock, Kevin D. Gandhi and Iswar K. Hariharan. (2014) The Drosophila F-box protein Fbxl7 binds to the protocadherin fat and regulates Dachs localization and Hippo signaling. eLife. Aug 8;3:e03383. PMID: 25107277